TextLiving helps businesses build loyalty

Oct. 20, 2013

Joe Brannon is the founder of TextLiving, a company that specializes in building customer loyalty programs in the coffee shop, convenience store, restaurant, grocery and retail industries. / Sanford Myers / The Tennessean

Written by

Eva Botkin-Kowacki

For The Tennessean

Joe Brannon

Age: 30 Position: CEO, TextLiving

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Next up: Joe Brannon

Joe Brannon has spent nearly half his life as an entrepreneur, beginning his career at age 12 and starting his first company at 16. His experience running businesses and marketing products has taught him how to help other companies grow and how to support his own staff.

His company, TextLiving, allows him to combine those abilities.

TextLiving operates as a virtual loyalty rewards card. Customers enter their cellphone number into an iPad at the store, restaurant or other company. Then when they return, the customers check in by entering their phone number. Companies are able to use this to offer deals such as a free coffee on your fifth visit.

The businesses also can send out a text message with a special offer code. The customer will enter that code on the iPad app to redeem the time-sensitive offer. This mechanism also is used to draw customers back in if they haven’t patronized the business recently. In this case, the text would give individuals a redemption code that would be valid for a week.

Brannon launched the TextLiving iPad app in September 2012, using Bowling Green, Ky., as a test market. The company has more than 196,000 subscribers in Kentucky and Middle Tennessee. Local businesses that employ TextLiving discounts include Edgehill Cafe, GoGo Sushi, Chick-fil-A in Franklin, Juice Bar and Bar-B-Cutie in Murfreesboro.

TextLiving was certainly not Brannon’s first venture into the entrepreneurship world. He learned the value of the dollar at age 12.

“If I wanted something, I had to go out and get it myself,” the serial entrepreneur said.

Brannon recalled asking his dad for a pair of Oakley sunglasses for a family trip to Six Flags. His father, a mechanic, told him it was out of the question.

However Brannon was determined to have those sunglasses. He gathered a vacuum, cleaning supplies and a friend and went door-to-door in his neighborhood, detailing cars. He made $250, enough to buy Oakleys.

“I was 12 years old and rolling down the street with a vacuum cleaner,” Brannon said. “What it taught me was to set a goal. You can achieve whatever you want. You just have to put your mind to it.”

When Brannon was 16, he was working at a golf course digging ditches. So, naturally, he bought a suit and went to work at a golf and hunting shop in Mississippi. That job helped him build relationships that led to the creation of his first business: a golf tournament management company that made specialty products for the events.

Brannon also has worked as a corporate employee and ran a mobile billboard company until the recession. At Corporate Express, he was the youngest account executive. When he began the job, he had just turned 19.

While the mobile billboard truck company ultimately failed, the experience shaped Brannon’s business acumen. He decided that his next company would have residual revenue and quantifiable success.

TextLiving aims to have both and helps other companies quantify their success. Every day, TextLiving can count the customers who have been drawn in by the rewards system, and it tracks use of the product regularly.

Brannon said many small-business owners struggle to track their success.

“They can be great at making the pie in the back, but they still have to run the business to make it profitable,” he said.

Brannon says TextLiving makes this possible for other entrepreneurs.

“My purpose in my life, in my mind, is to inspire people to do great things,” he said.

CrossFit, and wine and cigars with friends. Work is my hobby, because it’s not work.

What can you not live without?

I would have to say my wife, because I’d get in a lot of trouble if I didn’t. But in all seriousness, you have to have a support system. We’re on the same team. If you’re married to an entrepreneur, there are ups and downs. She puts up with me. There’s probably not another person that would.